Well – That Went Well!

I made quite a mess of my Aviva premiership predictions last week – I forecast 6 home wins and by Saturday night I had egg on my face (sadly not the Cadbury Cream kind) and was batting just 2 from 5. Round 13 was proving to be very unlucky for me!

My first two wrong calls were when Leicester won away at Worcester – admittedly by only the odd point in 45 – and the Saints came away with a win at Sandy Park, again by just a single park (16 – 17).

I did manage to get Sale v Gloucester right (24 – 19) and Bath knocking over the Falcons by a more comfortable margin of 18 at 24 – 6.

But my real faux pas was having Saracens down for a comfortable home win only to see them surprisingly dismantled by London Irish and on the wrong end of a 13 – 22 battering.

Thankfully on Sunday Harlequins dragged me back to a 50% prediction rate by thrashing Wasps 11 – 10 thanks to a try in the 77th minute!

My final humiliation was when I predicted that the table wouldn’t change following the weekend – as you can see there has been some movement plus closing of gaps at the top end!

Aviva Premiership Rugby Table

Pos

Team

Pl

W

D

L

Pts

1

Northampton Saints

13

11

1

1

51

2

Saracens

13

11

0

2

50

3

Bath Rugby

13

9

1

3

40

4

Harlequins

13

8

0

5

36

5

Leicester Tigers

13

7

2

4

36

6

Sale Sharks

13

7

0

6

34

7

London Wasps

13

6

0

7

32

8

Exeter Chiefs

13

6

0

7

29

9

Gloucester Rugby

13

4

0

9

22

10

London Irish

13

4

0

9

21

11

Newcastle Falcons

13

3

0

10

14

12

Worcester Warriors

13

0

0

13

4

I was a bit better in the International arena where I managed to get it 100% right with all three results going my way.

To be fair it wasn’t that tough, although I hadn’t expected Ireland and England to win quite so easily.

Together with France winning in Paris these dragged my percentage up to a more respectable 66.7% (alright an actual 66.66% recurring, if you want to be pedantic about it).

I especially enjoyed the Internationals – particularly the ‘handbags’ and ‘Glasgow hand shakes’ at the end of two of the games. In the other one I think the Jocks were too tired at the end to throw a meaningful punch.

It’s a week off from the 6 Nations now – but expect fireworks at Twickenham on Saturday week (and I don’t mean the pre-game entertainment)